Comparison of sensible and latent heat fluxes during the transition season over the western Tibetan Plateau from reanalysis datasets

The sensible and latent heat fluxes during the transition season over the western Tibetan Plateau from the NCEP-1 (NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis 1), AR-II (NCEP-DOE Reanalysis 2) and ERA40 reanalysis datasets were compared and analyzed. The results show that the phase change in soil moisture has a significant effect on the sensible and latent heat fluxes over the western Tibetan Plateau (TP) due to the freezing–thawing processes during the transition from the dry to the wet period. The uncertainties in the sensible and latent heat fluxes over the western TP are quite high in the reanalysis data, and depend largely on the success of the soil moisture simulations in the models. Improving the hydrological process simulations in the land-surface models in seasonally frozen ground and in the active frozen soil layer may be an effective way of enhancing the reliability of the surface heat fluxes from the reanalysis data over the Tibetan Plateau.